Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Srikanth and Keerti's Wedding Day

Srikanth Nori and Keerti's actual wedding day seemed almost anticlimactic affter all of the events that had been leading up to the wedding. The wedding was held in a huge warehouse type of builiding because there were 3,000 people there! Both Srikanth and Keerti's dads are very successful men, and they both invited all of their colleauges from work. Keerti's dad is the tax commissioner for the state of Andhra Pradesh, and so the governor of the whole state was there! The thing was huge, so basically Matt and I ate food, chatted with all of our new Indian friends, and then left. Oh, and I had another conversation with Srikanth's dad about Matt and his tight trousers and how he needs to do yoga. Haha!


The ceremony lasted for hours and hours. It seemed like chaos. No one was paying attention to what was going on in the ceremony, everyone was just chatting and eating and being noisy. There was live music as part of the ceremony, and that was cool. The singing was really cool also.





The family stood on stage throughout the ceremony, but wandered on and off because it was so long. Keerti and Srikanth looked bored for a lot of it. Keerti's outfit was intricate and amazing, and she had an outfit change about half way through the ceremony to a new, even more intricate outfit.


The Brahmin priests that conducted the ceremony were young and jovial. They were on a break when I took this picture of them, and I was surprised cause they started asking me all sorts of questions. They wanted to take a picture with me but then they decided it would be disrespectful for the wedding ceremony. They made e promise to meet up with them after the ceremony for pictures but Matt and I left early cause it lasted so long.
At one point, everyone made a line to give the couple their wedding gift. There are special envelpes for wedding gifts, and you fill them with cash. Luckily, one of our new Indian friends brought us an envelope so we could follow the tradition.